Mention Canada and a serious look comes across her face. It’s the same kind of face you’d get if you mentioned the Yankees to a Red Sox fan.

Bellamy is most certainly a Red Sox fan, so allow her to put this United States versus Canada women’s hockey rivalry into perspective. Is it Red Sox vs. Yankees? Patriots vs. Jets? Harvard vs. Yale?

“I’d say it’s more Red Sox-Yankees,” the two-time Olympian and 2005 Berkshire School graduate said. “It’s nuts. It’s the reason I’m still playing the game, this rivalry. It’s so intense, it’s so passionate. We don’t like them, they don’t like us. We know it when we step on the ice – there’s no friendships.”

The teams are likely to meet twice at the Sochi Games in a new Olympic format that tossed the United States into the same preliminary-round grouping with its hated rival. So now it’s double the intensity.

Wednesday morning at 7:30 EST on NBC Sports Network, Team USA and three-time defending champion Canada will meet in their final preliminary-round game at Shayba Arena in Sochi.

The winner is Group A champion and grabs a top seed. Both enter unbeaten with wins over Switzerland and Finland. The United States, which routed Switzerland 9-0 Monday when Bellamy played more than 18 minutes, has already clinched a berth in the semifinals next Monday.

Team USA and Canada will be placed in different brackets in the semifinals, setting up the possibility – or probability – of yet another gold-medal game between them Feb. 20. Team USA defeated Canada for the 2013 world championship, but lost by one goal in the final at the 2010 Olympics.

If you think emotions will run high Wednesday, wait until Feb. 20.

“Once you step on the ice and you’re going to play against them, you’re going for blood out there,” Bellamy said. “It’s crazy. It’s amazing. You want to play in that game. That’s the game you want to play in.”

The rivalry hit a powerful point at the end of their pre-Olympic series in Grand Forks, N.D., when Bellamy was one of several players caught up in a brawl immediately after the final horn.

The U.S. defeated Canada four straight times in the “Bring on the World Tour,” which gave it momentum heading into Sochi while also stirring the pot.

“I think it’s a huge confidence-builder for us and a little momentum going into the Olympics,” Bellamy said then. “But at the same time, there are things we need to work on and get better. And that’s the important thing – that we’re not just taking it and riding off of that.”

Team USA has medaled in every Olympics since women’s hockey joined the Winter Games in 1998. But the Americans have not won gold since then.